Rating information from ISO has helped insurers analyze risk and calculate premiums for decades. But the way carriers incorporate ISO information into their insurance products is evolving; using paper ISO Circulars and manuals for rating is rapidly becoming a thing of the past thanks to the evolution of ISO Electronic Rating Content™ (ERC™). Like many industries, the landscape changed, the needs changed and technology changed.

However, complying with all 50 states’ separate regulatory requirements remains as complex as ever. Utilizing ISO ERC™ effectively to bring insurance products to market quickly requires skilled resources and technology capable of consuming ISO content digitally. Unfortunately, many companies have lost resources with core insurance product management and technology skills due to recession-era layoffs and an ongoing wave of Baby Boomer retirements—and are having difficulty finding Insurance and technology professionals to fill those roles. Compounding the problem is that their policy administration systems are not architected to digitally consume ISO ERC™ and retro-fitting this functionality is not possible.

The winning formula is to combine ISO ERC™ with InsurTech skills and technology.

The Skills Required to Use ISO ERC™

To be able to work with ISO content effectively, you first need to understand the 20,000-page ISO Commercial Lines Manual (CLM) and the accompanying integrated state insurance manual (SIM) for each ISO line of business and jurisdiction. The manuals include all applicable rules, state exceptions, loss costs, policy forms, and endorsements. You also need to be intimately familiar with ISO Circulars which provide information on ISO filings for loss costs, rules, forms, and statistical plans, as well as actuarial data and analysis and other important insurance topics. ISO publishes more than 75 Circulars a week.

The next step is becoming familiar with ISO ERC™: the digitized version of the CLM. ERC™ is a collection of machine readable XML files containing the data and algorithms that are a digital manifestation of the CLM, SIM, and Circulars. But understanding ISO ERC™ is only a piece —to maximize your advantage, you need to be able to natively consume the XML content into your policy administration system and version each ISO ERC™ release you consume to ensure rating integrity and compliance.

So, how do insurance carriers assemble the insurance business expertise and technology to take advantage of ISO ERC™? Let’s analyze the demand.

Finding People Who Have Those Skills

The number of professionals 55 and older is 30% higher in the insurance industry than the rest of the economy (Cook 2015). According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2022, the insurance industry will need to replace more than 295,000 positions (Largent 2016). Only 40 colleges and universities offer degrees within the industry, and graduates from these programs will only fill 10-15% of the need (Largent 2016). The Millennials who now make up a majority of the workforce don’t view insurance as a particularly appealing profession: only 4% indicated insurance as an attractive industry (Cook 2015).

Compounding the problem is that many of the skills held by insurance business analysts and IT professionals who work in the traditional world of the CLM-SIM-Circular process no longer apply in the new world of ISO ERC™. With an automated process for consuming ISO ERC™ into your sales and policy lifecycle system, there’s no longer a need for large administrative and IT teams to spend hours interpreting printed ISO documents, translating the information into business requirements and technical specifications, and then configuring or programming the policy administration system.

Using ISO ERC™ requires InsurTech skills and capabilities, including:

Native consumption of ISO ERC™ in your technology platform

Management of multiple versions of ISO ERC™ in a policy administration platform

Insurance Business knowledge to support the configuration of carrier-specific exceptions to the ISO line of business “on top” of the “pure” ISO ERC™ version

Choosing the right InsurTech Partner

Native consumption of ISO ERC™ is a revolutionary breakthrough in the way insurance companies can utilize ISO information and combine it with carrier-specific exceptions to bring products to market quickly. To take full advantage of this breakthrough, insurance companies need people who know how to use ISO ERC™, and a policy administration system that can consume the content digitally.

Existing resources at insurance companies who work in the traditional ISO Manuals and Circulars process have not had exposure to ISO ERC™. The type of people who can do the job are in very short supply in the industry and expectations for Millennials entering the industry are low. That’s why Solartis has invested heavily in building the skills and technology needed to fully take advantage of ISO ERC™.

Solartis Insure is an insurance product “enabler” that provides comprehensive sales and policy lifecycle capabilities and Rating APIs that enable companies to leverage ISO ERC™ within their own platform. By natively consuming the pure rating information from each ISO version within 24 hours of its release, up to 90% of the rating is complete and available immediately—requiring only configuration of the carrier’s exceptions. This reduces cost and time to market for new insurance products.

A critical advantage of trusting Solartis with the job of working with ISO ERC™ is that our customers can focus their core resources on insurance product design instead of interpreting, translating and implementing ISO rules into their policy administration system. You can even pre-test your program with ISO content and exceptions in our sandbox environment concurrently with the development of your user interface.

It’s time to take the next step in the evolution of how insurance companies use information from ISO to bring products to market. Assess Solartis sales and policy lifecycle micro web services first-hand at no cost with one of our three sandboxes:

Business Analyst

Developer

User Experience

Sources:

Largent, E., & Paterakis, C. (2016, February 1). 5 ways you can help recruit the next generation of insurance professionals. http://www.propertycasualty360.com/2016/02/01/5-ways-you-can-help-recruit-the-next-generation-of